what to get mom for mother's day?

[thechidz]

I bought my mom a not so great IBM laptop last year. It suits her needs for internet browsing and thats it. She is on a very fixed income and lives in a small town in the midwest. The problem is that she has to go to the back bedroom to pick up wifi access, which is given to her free from the local small college, and it only picks up intermittently. I want to get her a mac for organizing pictures of her 4 granddaughters and surfing web/email etc, and I would love to give her my blackbook but it is way too much computer for her. Im thinking about getting her a G4 ibook for 250 or less but will the wifi card be strong enough for her to pick up signal without problem? I know the macbook would but ibook has older technology.

 

[Morod]

Wifi repeater?

What would be cool is a wireless repeater. I don't even know if they make such a thing as I've never thought of one before. What it would do is work like a radio repeater. Take a weak wifi signal and amplify it to make a much stronger wifi signal. So you could put it in the back bedroom to receive the wifi and boost the signal to make it strong enough to pick up anywhere in her place.
Or, a nice ice cream cake from Baskin Robbins?
Morod

 

[thechidz]

What would be cool is a wireless repeater. I don't even know if they make such a thing as I've never thought of one before. What it would do is work like a radio repeater. Take a weak wifi signal and amplify it to make a much stronger wifi signal. So you could put it in the back bedroom to receive the wifi and boost the signal to make it strong enough to pick up anywhere in her place.
Or, a nice ice cream cake from Baskin Robbins?
Morod

I was thinking the same thing but I dont know if there is such a thing?

 

[Willis]

I was thinking the same thing but I dont know if there is such a thing?

Yeah, there is. I use the old AEBS and AE to cover the whole of my house.

Only thing is that it has to be configure by the router from which it will receive data from.

 

[chas0001]

I am not sure whether this would be possible : http://lifehacker.com/software/how-to/turn-your-wifi-router-into-a-repeater-265142.php. Maybe somebody has tried it.

 

[zainjetha]

however i doubt the local college will agree to configure the WiFi repeater, however you never know...

This would extend the range to many others as well and the colleges internet bandwith would run out fast...

 

[mariotheotaku]

what kind of router does she has? maybe get her a wireless N router, they have the longest range of all of the routers.

 

[thechidz]

however i doubt the local college will agree to configure the WiFi repeater, however you never know...

This would extend the range to many others as well and the colleges internet bandwith would run out fast...

haha... no really, we are talking a town of 8000 here and she lives on the edge of town. There is no issue with bandwidth there (that really made me chuckle/snort out loud!)

She knows the people that are in charge of internet access there so Im sure it wouldnt be a big deal, I might look into this...

btw... this is the hippiest of hippy schools (the environmental-liberal arts college) so they are all about open access... which I guess is more feasible out in the boondocks...

 

[digitalnicotine]

The kids in the pic are adorable! I would go ahead with the older iBook. You can get an airport card on eBay, or a wireless dongle.